World’s ‘most flagrant abusers’ set to join UN Human Rights Council

World’s ‘most flagrant abusers’ set to join UN Human Rights Council
Among the nations poised to join the UN Human Rights Council are Saudi
Arabia, China, and Russia, which have all stymied attempts by the
council to look into their human-rights records.
By Howard LaFranchi

Well, yes, it’s that, too. But it’s also a partial list of the countries
that are expected to win easy election next week to the United Nations
Human Rights Council. On Tuesday, the UN General Assembly votes to fill
14 seats on the 47-member council, the UN’s highest human-rights
institution.

The Human Rights Council has been criticized for welcoming countries
with questionable human-rights records into its Geneva-based membership
ever since it was created in 2006 to replace the discredited Human
Rights Commission.

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But this year’s list of candidates, which are selected by region and
serve three-year terms, has human-rights groups howling.

“For the UN to elect Saudi Arabia as a world judge on human rights would
be like a town making a pyromaniac into chief of the fire department,”
says Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based UN
monitoring group that focuses on human rights.

Last month, New York-based Human Rights Watch blasted Saudi Arabia for
its “extraordinarily high levels of repression and its failure to carry
out its promises to the Human Rights Council.”

Human Rights Watch this week joined more than 40 other human-rights
groups in publishing an open letter that calls on the international
community to deny the world’s “most flagrant abusers” a seat on the council.

Saying the election of countries that fail to uphold “the highest human
rights standards” undermines the council, the letter says that “the
unwillingness of candidates such as Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia to
respect and support the important role played by civil society,
non-governmental organizations, and human rights defenders is deeply
concerning.”

Human Rights Watch also notes that several of this year’s candidates
have flagrantly rebuffed the work of the organization they now seek to
join.
According to the group, five of this year’s 16 council candidates have
for years rejected council efforts to send expert teams to review their
respect for human rights. China, Russia, and Algeria have each refused
10 or more requests for expert visits, while Saudi Arabia and Vietnam
have seven unanswered visit requests each.

Rights groups thought they had a chance to keep Saudi Arabia off the
council because it was originally one of five candidates for four seats
allotted to the Asia-Pacific region, which encompasses the Middle East.
But then Jordan withdrew its candidacy, leaving Saudi Arabia with no
competition. Rights groups say their pressure and lobbying have been
instrumental in defeating or forcing the withdrawal of past council
candidates such as Belarus, Iran, and Syria.

China is also a top target of human rights activists, though defeating
China would be particularly difficult, given that it is a permanent
member of the UN Security Council, UN analysts say.

“To allow China to become a member is to allow a wolf to take care of
the sheep,” Rebiya Kadeer, a prominent Uighur activist, said Tuesday at
a New York panel discussion of the council election.

The United Sates, which is a member of the council until 2015, has
criticized the human-rights records of a number of this year’s
candidates – including China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Cuba – but has
not openly campaigned in New York to defeat those or other candidates.

During the Bush administration and after the council’s creation in 2006,
the US vocally opposed the election of rights abusers to the council.

Last month, at a review of council candidates in Geneva, the US did
express some qualms about some of the countries on the list, including
China and Saudi Arabia.

“We’re concerned that China suppresses freedoms of assembly,
association, religion, and expression,” Uzra Zeya, the acting assistant
secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights,
and Labor, said at the review. China “harasses, detains, and punishes
activists,… targets rights defenders’ family members and friends, and
implements policies that undermine the human rights of ethnic minorities.”

As for Saudi Arabia, the US said it was “very concerned that Saudi
citizens have been harassed, targeted, detained, and punished for simply
expressing their beliefs, opinions, and views.”

But the assessment, which also noted bright spots in the Saudi kingdom’s
record, suggested the US would not outwardly oppose Saudi Arabia’s
council candidacy. It heralded Saudi Arabia “allowing” women to vote and
run in 2015 municipal elections, criminalizing domestic abuse, and
“improving protections” for domestic workers.

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